


Counting Coup

by thelongcon (rainer76)



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Lizzie POV, M/M, One Shot, outsider pov, warped perspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 16:33:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1864746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s Lizzie who starts the game, and that’s what it is among the children, a silent pastime that’s hidden from the adults, built on dares, boredom, and a need for a thrill; it escalates - as these things are won’t to do – with each circuit of tag</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting Coup

It’s Lizzie who starts the game, and that’s what it is among the children, a silent pastime that’s hidden from the adults, built on dares, boredom, and a need for a thrill; it escalates - as these things are won’t to do – with each circuit of tag, evolving from stealing into Carol’s cell and touching her bag of knives to finding an excuse to separate Tyreese from his hammer – he’s Thor, Luke insisted; whereupon Lizzie turned a sinister smile and said, he might smite you – it was harmless (while they were in the confines of the prison), it was fun. 

Before this entire mess started – and ‘mess’ was her dad’s euphemism, as if the world had become an untidy bedroom; when their mom was alive and her parents were together, when Micca was too young to properly remember - they went to see family in Western Australia.  Lizzie remembers their nasal accents, the quality of heat that blew in from the Nullarbor Plain and the ocean that stretched out forever in darkest blues.  She remembers shark cage diving with her mom, submerged beneath the waves to see the Great White’s of the Australian Bight; power and teeth and eyes that would roll back into their head before they attacked the cage.  Lizzie was terrified and bewitched; she could feel her mother’s hand on her shoulder, see the halo of her floating hair, the keel of the boat bobbing above in the waves.  In her wetsuit the temperature of the water felt blood-warm, and when the shark streaked by for a third time, Lizzie stretched a hand out between the bars and touched its roughened flank.

It was the most dangerous creature in the ocean. Lizzie flourished the same palm in front of her father that night. 

He had disagreed in general.  Dad didn’t like the water, he didn’t support cage diving on principle, something about the methods employed, the use of chum and how sharks were associating humans with food, but most importantly (and unlike her mom), he didn’t feel Lizzie was old enough to go.  Lizzie didn’t care about the politics; she just wanted to see the sharks.  Her parents were polar opposites –the only thing they agreed upon was the divorce – and Lizzie’s mom never applied for custody of the children when they went their separate ways. “I touched it,” she said that night, brandishing her palm, rubbing at the skin proudly.

“You weren’t scared?”

It’s a stupid question.  Anyone who comes face to face with a Great White in the sea is terrified, bars or no; Lizzie didn’t see fit to answer the question; instead, she stared at the rash on her skin:  “I touched it, or it touched me…dad, do you think contact will change it?”

“Lizzie, honey, contact changes everything.”

Here and now, Lizzie gazes over the middle distance, where the walkers are stacked up against the fence, their skin fish-white in the moonlight, eyes rolling backward into their heads.  Lizzie has a rat in hand, her version of chum, and under the cover of darkness she will touch their flanks, feel her fingers sink into their rotten flesh.  Contact changes everything.  They can alter her; turn her into something new - something different - but she can affect them too; Lizzie believes this, she knows it right down to her very bones, she feeds them rats through the fence-line, delighted at their proximity, giving them names one walker at a time, and scrubs the flakes of dead skin from her palm.

There are two versions of the game: one played by night with the walkers, kept hidden from her kin, where Lizzie is queen and unafraid to _see_ them for who they are (Not dead.  Not empty. _Just different._  Lizzie’s seen unwavering hunger before) - and the other game is dictated by the daylight hours, shared among the children, by the people who occupy the jail. There is a marked difference in temperament between those who spent their time in Woodbury before the prison, and those who spent it surviving in the wild.  Some folks allow the children to touch their weapons with ease, others yet can be separated from their favourite knife, gun - or insert your weapon of choice - for a short stay of time; but a select few were difficult to sneak up on and touching their weapons at all was nigh on impossible. It was a stacked pyramid and those at the very peak of the pinnacle – the Michonne’s and the Daryl’s of the prison – well, let’s say you had a better chance of touching the stars and the moon.

Micca was the unsurpassed champion and it used to drive Lizzie mad because as elder _she_ was more stealthy – but Micca was unassuming and innocent, boldly, she could stroll right up to things - _people,_ Lizzie reminds herself, they’re _people_ \- and just touch them, stroke a casual finger across their weapon. Lizzie was more cunning, and in a prison-full of survivors who were hyper-vigilant by default her manner of approach drew their respective gazes like a laser-beam.   Ironically, she couldn’t get within ten feet of the katana or the crossbow and Lizzie’s only consolation was that Micca - who had racked up a larger tally by far - couldn’t draw close either; those type of weapons were never left unattended.

“You’re counting coup?” Daryl asks, disbelievingly.

“I’m what?” Lizzie squeaks in return.

He frowns, the knife is half-drawn from its sheath; Daryl lets it drop with a whisper of metal against leather.  “Ask your old man, I ain’t no damn history teacher.”

“You and Michonne have the highest tally points,” Lizzie blurts, trying to stall him.  

The adults have been ranked into separate groupings, based on how dangerous the children perceive them to be, touch them unawares and you earned a point; double points were earned if you made contact with their favourite weapon while it was carried on their person. It was a game of stealth, matching prowess against a bigger (and unaware) foe; some could be tricked into handing over their weapons – Tyreese leant out his hammer to almost a dozen children one lazy afternoon, who urgently needed to nail down boards, and shook his hand joyfully afterward - but others were hostile as a junk-yard dog. When she held Tyreese’s hammer, Lizzie spent three minutes examining the tool, searching for hair matter, rustic blood, evidence caught in the leather handle, but it was disappointingly clean. Lizzie doesn’t have an excuse for handling the crossbow though, or the sword, hence, the higher tally points for the level of difficulty. Having been caught red-handed, Lizzie figures if she reveals the rules of the game Daryl might take pity on her and give the points away regardless.

“Why?” he asks, flatly.

“You and Michonne are the most dangerous.”

Daryl certainly looks the part; he acts the part, too. Lizzie expects him to puff up with the compliment, a deliberate stroke to the male ego, but the sound Daryl makes in response can only be described as a snort – or if he were Lizzie’s age - it could be argued he blew a raspberry.  “Kid, get yer eyes checked over.”  He doesn’t give Lizzie the points; he doesn’t let her touch the crossbow either.  Daryl says over his shoulder, dismissive.  “Try harder next time.”

“I wouldn’t,” Luke whispered later, when Lizzie shared the story.  “If you startled him for sure, you might end up with a knife between the ribs.”

Micca was drawing a tree in the dirt with her forefinger, branches extended over a box house.  “Yeah, but he wouldn’t _mean_ to.”

“My point, we should stick to the Woodbury folk instead.”

“It doesn’t count unless there’s _some_ element of danger,” Lizzie argued.  “It’s what counting coup is, my dad explained it to me.”

The Plains Indians didn’t always kill their targets – in fact, they earned greater prestige if they left them alive – daring to get close, closer, to touch skin against skin and dart away, fleet as a wild mustang. And this isn’t the real game; it’s a practice run, a training ground for what occurs at night. Touch alters people, it humiliates or embarrasses them, it can entice, arouse, infect.   It can embolden.  It can make Lizzie’s heart race, it can render, hurt, it can calm the recipient and the initiator – no one is left unsullied - no one remains true to their first course of action, like a ripple in a pond or a butterfly in Japan, their navigation slips off kilter in response.

“Daryl doesn’t think he’s the most dangerous man in camp?” Sarah asked, wonderingly.  “Then who?”

 

 

***

 

Lizzie thinks the answer is simple – it was Daryl who introduced the term ‘counting coup’ – and if she were to apply the same rules to him as the Plains Indians, then the most dangerous man in camp is the one Daryl seeks to touch.  It wouldn’t be huge or flashy – it wouldn’t be the bear hug Tyreese gives Sasha - it would be furtive, sly, quick as a striking snake.  It would be like the game the children play, subtle, existing under the radar.  

It takes Lizzie less than a week to determine the most dangerous man in prison is Rick Grimes - although unlike Michonne and Daryl - he doesn’t look the part.  In fact, Rick doesn’t even act the part.  Lizzie’s never seen Mr. Grimes do anything but tend the fields; he carries only a knife on his belt, he has no gun to play tag with, he wasn’t even part of the children’s original scoring system; she can’t figure out _how_ Daryl defines him as a threat - she only knows that he does. 

And in Lizzie’s world, threat is an ‘elastic’ term, most people consider the walkers a threat - Lizzie knows in some ways they _are_ \- but she prefers to be their friend, walkers are more real to Lizzie than some of the children she plays with.  Lizzie wonders if that’s how Daryl feels; knowing the outcome might hurt, but daring to take the risk anyway.  Daryl thinks Rick Grimes is the most dangerous man in camp – and in Lizzie’s world – that too is ‘elastic’, myriad with possible meanings.

Lizzie’s heard rumours, stories that were cut off when they realised she was near, how Rick snuck into Woodbury once to save his people, that after stirring up a hornets nest he returned hours later, with even _less_ numbers, to take Daryl back from the Governor.  She’s heard Rick was insane, that he refused to help people, drove folks from the prison yard while screaming like a banshee. She’s heard he ruled his little group through the winter period with an iron fist and a tactician’s cool ability to foresee a threat, to counter-plan a course of action.  She’s overheard he butchered folks (his best friend) that he filleted them open and spilt their insides onto the ground. She’s heard Rick and Daryl were at odds when they first met, that they might have been foes if circumstances had strayed to the left.  Lizzie’s never believed any of those tales – she believes what she can see – and Rick has never seemed overtly dangerous to her; except Daryl is counting coup – sly and furtive, a stroke across a stomach, a tap to the wrist, seeing how often he can tag Rick before he draws a strong reaction. 

Lizzie believes in what she can see and in her opinion the walkers aren’t evil, no more than a Great White is, than any animal of the kingdom, and despite what Carol says they are not dead. Dead is six feet under. Dead is stillness, immobility; dead is the absence of hunger, the inability to want.  Dead is never coming back.  Walkers are not the same as Carol, as Lizzie, as anyone else who can talk; but they’re none of the above either, and when Lizzie dies, she’s going to be _exactly like them_ – Lizzie will go on, they will all go on, just differently – and that afterlife is more realistic than the ethereal promise of heaven. 

She sneaks away in the middle of the night; she plays a different type of tag. 

Later, when it’s Micca, Tyreese, Carol, and her; Lizzie will play _ring-a-ring-of-rosies_ in an open garden - counting coup with a walker – her chant broken by bright peals of laughter as she darts away - _a pocketful of posies.  Atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down_.

 

 

***

 

The first touches are incidental, Rick believes, they’re a ‘heads up’, or indicate a direction to take; the first touches barely register because in the early days Rick’s mind is crammed full of other concerns; later, he starts to notice.  It’s a tug to get him out of the way of a clear shot, a helping hand to find his feet, or a quicksilver grin when he discovers a trail.  At the prison it’s a pat to the stomach, like someone rubbing the belly of a fat Buddha for luck – you kept us alive on every run before now, please, please, pass along some of that luck – and Rick might scoff at the notion except Daryl touches him _every single time_ before he leaves.  It’s nothing big, fleeting quick – but in Rick’s growing awareness – those terms become elastic, small becomes monumental when touch is so rarely sought; and quick becomes purposeful when he considers the location. Stomach and belly, organs and innards, vulnerability covered over by a dirty hand - in the places where there’s no measure of natural protection – incidental loses its shine. Rick comes to anticipate it, holds still, breath held in and his skeleton a wireframe. He can’t go on the runs, not anymore, but Rick makes certain to be at the gate before every departure, eyes narrowed like a gunslinger as he watches them go.

Daryl goes out on a scouting run - one day after the worst rainfall of the season - he returns on a bike splashed with mud, his entire person having fared no better, painted from head to toe in brown.

The council listen to his debrief from a polite distance and when Daryl’s done they inform him, most kindly, that he smells like a wet dog and please god _go_ _away_ before someone starts gagging.

“You weren’t this rude over winter.”

“Yeah, well, I couldn’t smell you over my own stench then,” Glenn mutters.

Rick finds him under the showerhead, letting the mud run from his frame in rivulets.  Daryl’s standing barefoot on his poncho, protection against the slippery tiles, forearms braced against the walls and the water beading on his nape, running a channel from his shoulder-blades to the swell of his arse. His calf muscles are defined, skin sleek as a seal. 

“Water’s warm?” Rick asks softly, because he knows better than to approach unawares.

“Hmm.  Y’all better hurry.” 

Rick drops his own gear, smelling like hard work and prison yard soil.  He coils an arm around Daryl, palm against his stomach, torso brushing his spine, and kisses Daryl’s shoulder, trails his mouth over wet skin and black demons. He’s gentle in this, Rick always has been, there’s no room for brutality in the space they etch for themselves, there’s no cause for hurt in an act of discovery – and it is, every single time - the shiver of response, the flinch of muscle, the unexpected sigh. It’s implicit trust in the tilt of a throat or the cant of hips, a treasure map of worth. 

“Come on,” Daryl says, whiskey rough, demanding. “We ain’t got all day.”

We, Rick hears, us and ours, these are the things Rick approves of, he’s never done well being alone - they’re the type of things Daryl’s learning about, clumsy, sometimes too rigid, more often generous to a fault.  Rick cups Daryl’s genitals, lets water and heat catch between them, he taps an inquisitive knee against Daryl’s thighs and feels the shift when Daryl widens his stance obligingly. Rick wants him open and blissed out.  He wants his fingertips buried deep, to feel the tension as a vibration, cleaved on dick and drugged on pleasure.  He wants to say ‘face down, ass up’, and feel the instant give - the way Daryl gives up anything for Rick – a sweet burn of friction.  He _wants_.

“Got you,” Rick reassures.  “I have you.”  He thrusts slowly, patient in the things that matter most, but deep enough to raise Daryl onto his tiptoes each time, scrambling for purchase against the tiles.  Over-head, the water shuts off.  Rick curls around him, he jerks Daryl off in direct counter-point, hand loose around his cock, sharing body heat and slick skin.  Rick kisses where he can touch, and feels Daryl squeeze around him like a vice.

“I’m gonna  - “ he stutters. 

His eyelashes are long, Daryl’s biting his bottom lip and the muscles of his forearm flex against the tiles as he braces. He looks beautiful, quivering on the end of Rick’s cock.  Rick palms his stomach and feels the heat splash against his knuckles. Daryl spasms around him, jerking helplessly; Rick waits until his muscles slacken, until he’s gasping against the tiles for breath, then fucks Daryl through the aftermath. “I’ve got you,” Rick soothes, and touches Daryl in all the places he can reach, to collide and knock him off course, to change the outcome of their interactions like a ripple in a pond.

It started with a touch, maybe it was a bared knife or a slap against a stomach, but on either occasion, Rick was inclined to _react_.  Contact changes everything.

 


End file.
